Tau had taken his advice and signed up with the Atherian Army. They didnt' have very rigorous record keeping so they just let her join, so long as she could prove she was a magic user and not a spy. Brandon managed to conjure some wind in her hand which helped her get past that requirement. But since getting her uniform and being sent on the ship, she'd become more and more anxious. Maybe it was just that every passing day she got closer to home,so home was on her mind more and more. Sitting on that ship with the rest of the Atherian soldiers she couldn't help but feel like she didn't belong, and that everyone else knew it.
"How close are we?" she whispered in the dark.
Close to her in the dark torchlit cavern of the ship Brandon said, "I don't know."
Tau spent her first few days on the ship at the top of the deck. She never had been stationed on an aircraft carrier, so it did take some getting used to the rolling of the waves in the ocean. But she liked the view on the deck, constantly checking the horizon for any sight of land, any glimpse of home. Though ever since they entered the bay of mist, all non-essential personnel for commanding the ship were forced under into the lower decks. Supposedly there were things you could see in the mist to make you jump overboard, and they didn't want to lose anyone if they didn't have to. It astonished Tau that they could even navigate through the Bay of Mist, she'd always knew it as impassable by any ships. The current was strong, and the winds always seemed to blow towards the vampire kingdoms, where the unfortunate passengers of ships marooned upon those rocky foreign shores would be enslaved. But no such thing had happened to their ship. Maybe by magic, or the common screeching sound of the dragons that flew above them, their small fleet seemed to know the way. It was an ingenious plan, since the Zytrians believed this part of the Eastern ocean to be impossible to attack from, the coast would be unguarded. It also meant that Tau could slip into the country side after landing without having to do any fighting.
Suddenly the uneasy silence among the others sitting with Tau broke. There were three elven men, one elven woman, a dwarven woman, an orc, a fairy, an alzcan and two other humans. The Elven woman looked to Tau under the orange glow of the torches and asked, "What's your story?" Her face seemed stern and inquisitive. Tau didn't know if she could read minds, so she decided to think exclusively about cheeseburgers for the next twenty seconds, but in so doing she awkwardly forgot to answer the question.
Brandon spoke up for her, "Refugee who fled the genocide, just like the rest of us humans." He nudged her on the shoulder, "She's just glad for the opportunity to go set her homeland free."
"Yeah I just... Want to protect Atheria."
The dwarf spoke up, "Oy, and what do you think we'll be doin when we get there?" He coughed a worringly rancid cough.
The Elven woman answered, "Liberating the humans from the oppression of the Zytrian Crown. Once they see the beauty and stability that comes with freedom, democracy, and equality, they won't want anything else. The plan is to defeat the Zytrian military, and then win over the hearts and minds of the people. By the time they realize they don't have to bend the knee to any more kings or queens, they'll be picking up guns and fighting for us."
Tau shook her head, if you wanted to win over hearts and minds you probably should have tried to do that before burning any cities to the ground.
"Oy, you make a good point! I reckon, realistically, they'll be throwin parties for us when we arrive. I mean I don't know what sorta propoganda they been hearin, but when they see what we's actually like. They'll be all for overthrowing the monarchy."
Tau couldn't stop herself from talking, "And what happens when the monarchy is overthrown? Huh? What do we do then? Hand the land back to the elves and the dwarves and everyone else. Annex them? Make them apart of Atheria? Just kill them all?"
A human voice echoed down from the darkness, "You sound like the one dragon rider."
"Rex" Another voice said, "The coward."
Brandon swooped in to save her, "Well Tau is no coward. She's not even a conscript, she's a volunteer! She just wants to make sure that the people who are giving us orders have a plan for how all this is going to end."
The elven woman answered firmly, "I'm glad to hear it. My family fled the mainland one hundred Years ago, ever since then we've waited for this moment. Now it's finally time for hatred and evil to fall, and good to rise up in its place."
"I just want make sure Atheria is safe and to get back home, and honestly..." the elven man paused in his breath "I just really miss my cat."
"I miss my mother, and her cookies. Gods, I miss the smell. When this war is over I want each and every one of you to mom's house for chocolate chip cookies ."
"If there's any food I'd want to come back to after liberating a continent from the grip of evil, chocolate chip cookies would probably top of the list." The elven woman spoke up again, "I promised my wife I'd come home with at least ten pounds of Zytrian made strawberry fruit cake. So I'm just looking forward to seeing her face when I bring back twenty." At first Tau thought the woman had misspoke, before remembered that in Atheria it's normal for guys to love guys and girls to love girls.
The sound of a large wave crashed against the hull of the ship and sent it rolling a bit. A voice from the back of the boat began in harmony,
"Summer winds oh carry my hope, take me away from my burning home. Find me a place where the stars and the sun still ride the skies free." It was the voice of a woman, singing perfectly in tune, "The towers I've built oh do fall, the pride of my people no longer stands tall, so summer winds please set me free, oh carry me there. For when I look upon this land, I see nothing but the destruction of man. My forests are gone, my mountains been wronged, the sky now choked out by smoke." Others joined in, "Summer winds oh carry me hope, take me away from my dying home. Find me a place where the stars and the sun still ride the skies freely. Find me a place of light, where the fires of magic still burn bright oh give me a home where the stars, are like diamonds set in the sky." The whole boat was singing now, "Oh summer winds summer winds, please take me there. To a land so beautiful, a land so fair, that the dragons they sing in the sky like a chorus from heaven. Oh summer winds please fill my sails, from this tragedy oh do let me avail that I should love and hope once they way I did before this." The song then took a darker turn, "Oh and winter winds carry me home, so that one day I might reclaim that hope, and set my lands free from the hate of those who took them. Summer winds they set me free, but winter winds please, I beg unto thee, not let me stay complacent, do not let me forget of the land of our mothers."
Tau half expected the song to continue, but it didn't. It just halted on those final words, words about the winter winds filling their sails, the ones carrying them towards Zytria right now. Then from above deck she heard a voice shout, "Land Ho!"
The elvish woman smiled, "Sing a little tune, and the gods will hear you better than any prayer."
Everybody scrambled above deck and Tau was right behind them. The wooden ladders of the sailed ship were quite slippery, so Tau stumbled a few times before she managed to pull herself up onto the top deck. She was hit by a wall, of grey. The fog so thick that the ship seemed lost in it. She followed the group in the general direction of the stern, anxiously tugging at the cuff of the dark blue jacket she wore against the cold. The sound of the sea, water washing past the front of the boat, guided her through the thick fog. When she reached the front she held onto the railing of the ship, leaning slightly over the edge. The others seemed to be staring into the wall of fog just as intently as she was. Brandon was the first to ask, "Where is it?"
A deep guttural screech emanated from the cloud of deep grey before them as a roar of orange flame sparked out from the fog, revealing a Dragon standing proudly on a Zytrian beach. "I can't believe it."
The captain pointed shorewards and shouted, "Ready the Ice!" One man and five elves ran to the side of the boat and casted down a wall of frost, within a few minutes there was a thick sheet of ice locking the boat in place. "Drop the rope! We walk to shore."
They flung a rope over the side and it landed on the magically produced ice. Tau and the others gathered near the rope, she could see now, there were about 100 soldiers on the boat. There were a plurality of elves, but also lots of orcs and dwarves. Even a goblin, which Tau swore she had read were supposed to be extinct. They each slid down the rope one by one, Tau stuck as close to Brandon as possible, until he too went over and so she followed. She used her air academy training to hold tightly to the rope and shimmy down. A few feet off the ground she jumped from the rope and her feet clapped loudly against the surprisingly solid ice. It was only one hundred feet to the shore from the ship. But every step felt like a mile. The sound of waves washing against the shore, the look of boulders covered in seafoam, the dreariness of the fog. All this time she wanted to come home, but as she stood at the point where Ice met sand, she couldn't take the next step. She never thought she'd come home like this, as a traitor. Her heart always held the expectation that she'd see her mom with medals around her neck, and pride in her heart, but now she was advancing home with an army of dwarves and elves. Tau didn't even know if her mom would still love her if she knew she was a coward.
Brandon stood there, his white purple hair blown sideways by the wind, "Come on." This was what she wanted, to just find her way back. She did it, she escaped. This was her homeland, her country, her kingdom. This, these grey shores, were that thing she once swore she'd die to protect. She took the step, and felt her foot sink into sand and sea foam. She was back, in Zytria.
But the feeling of patriotism did not wash back over her. She did not feel like she was home, she felt just as alone and lost as ever. She thought about what Brandon had said about home, how what really matters is that you're with the things you truly love. She realized then, that Zytria no longer felt like home. That love she held for the country had faded, or maybe it wasn't real in the first place. She shook her head, her mother, and Arthus, and Michael, god Michael out there somewhere, they were her home. Brandon and the other soldiers gathered on the beach. It occurred to her that the Elven woman from before was actually the leader of their company, as she stood at the front of the group of soldiers.
A dragon, the same one that had signaled to them about the beach, swooped down onto the sand. The sound of his voice intermittently was broken by waves as he said, "You warriors were blown off course about twenty kilometers, the main contingent of the Lyre Arm beach head made it to Alexandria beach." He changed his tune, "The rendezvous point is still the city of Altelo, but about 2 kilometers north of here is a naval radio outpost, it's defended by anti-air. There can't be more than 20 men in there, but it's absolutely critical we cut off enemy lines of communication before they can coordinate a successful defense." From what Tau had heard from Brandon about the Zytrian chain of command, there was pretty much no higher Authority than a dragon rider. "Your advisements, are to take the outpost, and then link up with the rest of Lyre Arm, at Altelo."
Tau had heard lots about the Atherian military from Brandon. Apparently, the army doesn't give orders, but just "advisements", which you're technically free to disobey at any time, though nobody does. And there was truly no stated chain of command, technically the boss of the whole army was the Dragon Rider's council itself, but seeing as they didn't have time to vote on every single matter, it became the case that each Dragon Rider was essentially able to hand out any advisement contradicting any other dragon rider, and the soldiers were simply free to follow whichever order they found the most convincing.
The Dragon rider and his steed bounded across the beach without another word, and then took to the sky. Then the elvish woman spoke, her golden hair flying fearlessly against the wind, her words piercing against the roar of the sea, "You heard him! Form ranks! We take the north road."
Somebody raised their hand, she pointed to him, "What's a radio outpost?"
Tau answered reflexively, "Well, it's a wireless communication center that relies on the resonance frequencies of electrons captured in a transmission antenna, which then produce long form electromagnetic radio waves that then bounce up off of the upper atmosphere to allow the transmission of messages to targets beyond the horizon." Half of the group seemed to have had their jaws near the floor, Tau quickly did damage control, "It's a big metal tower with blinky lights on it."
Everybody nodded, and then the commander said "Everyone keep an eye out for a giant tower with blinky lights on it." Then they all made their way off of the beach, and up a small hill before coming to a coastal road. They marched, not at all like an army, moving down the road without any cover. The flat coastal road quickly gave way to an up and down winding passage near cliffs. Apparently their definition of "form ranks" was to make a general line about three people wide, and then casually jaunt down the road. Tau shook her head, how does an army with no discipline stand a chance?
Tau's eyes were darting back and forth into the countryside, looking for the barrel of a gun against the gray of the fog. Brandon must have noticed her nervousness, because he tried to make some small talk, "So, what was that about the radio back there?"
"Huh?" Tau was confused by what he meant.
"I mean... You just really seemed to know what you were talking about."
"Oh." She nodded to herself, "My mother was a radio technician before she became a farmer. It was quite the step down for her, so talking in insane detail about the mechanics of radios was about the only way for her to stay sane." She laughed, "Though she hated the damn things because of all the" Tau wanted to say news, but she caught herself, she knew better, "the propaganda on the radio. I remember one time she chucked one against the wall and it broke, and I'll never know if she just did it because she was mad, or because she was bored and just wanted the chance to fix it."
"Your mom sounds like quite the woman."
"She really wasn't." Tau replied bluntly, "She loved my stepfather lots, and when they were together she was happy but when he died..."
"Why do you call him your step father?" Brandon asked.
"Because he wasn't my dad he just married my mom."
"Yeah, but he raised you." He just sounded confused, "Doesn't that make him your dad?"
She shook her head, "That freak ruined my life, and he would have torn apart our whole family." She was kind of ashamed to say it. It sounded so childish to admit, but it was the truth, "He's really the reason I hated magic users. Parsov was a horrible person. He was selfish cruel and greedy, and he never treated me like I was his daughter. I was always just loose weight to him, somebody to be rid of. After we left Drona, his powers became something terrifying. He'd scare me and my mom with them, setting his hands to fire when he was angry, burning the forests around our farm, he was just always so angry. One time he even burned my face with his fire, and then when I ran to try and tell my mom he caught me and healed me against my will, that way I looked like a crazy person telling her what had happened. Saying my whole face had been on fire, while staring back with skin clearer than a southern sky. I just assumed that everyone with magical powers was the same way as him, cruel, violent, and manipulative. That's why I volunteered for the ARNA, I thought I was making the world a better place by..." even marching so close to Brandon she didn't want to say it out loud, by killing the people like him. She looked at Brandon, "But my Father is dead, and he can't hurt me or my family anymore. That's all behind me."
"What about your mom?" He asked in a somewhat comforting manner.
"I have... Mixed feelings about her. I mean, I love her, but I don't trust her, you know? And without trust, our house kind of turned into a bit of a warzone." She chuckled to herself, "It's always funny to me. She got so angry when I said I was leaving to join the aircorps, but I had always assumed she wanted me go-"
A gunshot rang out, and the elf in front of them fell to the ground. Tau knew exactly what to do, she wrapped her arm around Brandon and dragged him to the ground with her as fast as she could. The people left standing used their magic to pull up glowing yellow shields, and others brought out bows. Anyone without shielding was being picked off. Tau knew the fire had to be coming from the countryside, "Crawl towards the coast!" She shouted to Brandon, who quickly did as she asked. They crawled off of the road and onto the shore side.
"Where is he-" Another gunshot rang out.
"On the le-" Another shot, followed by the unmistakable sound of a human skull exploding upon the entry of a bullet.
"Keep your shields up!" the commander said, the glow on her own yellow barrier fading.
More and more gun shots were ringing out as the shields dropped among the warriors trapped on the street. Tau couldn't keep silent any longer, "Throw down your shields and crawl to the ditch!"
Many did run to the ditch, before the Commander shouted, "Find the sniper!"
The soldiers were looking as their numbers dwindled, many Atherians were smart enough to dart into another soldier's magic shields when there's fell. Eventually someone said, "There he is! On that hill!" He pointed to a bush tactically situated on the crest of a low ridge.
"Light it up!" The commander ordered and in an instant all their shields dropped, and the rapid twinge of magically enchanted arrows, mixed with lightning, frost and fire bolts, all arced through the air towards the snipers position. They hit with the furious pound of 100 artillery guns as the ridge where the man was shooting from, was simply removed from existence with fiery prejudice. A vicious explosion ripped the hill asunder, and the gun fire stopped.
The Elven woman once again took charge of the situation, "I want all wounded healed, and a total count of how many of us are still..." She trailed off, as if realizing the reality that many of her friends had just perished, "I want a head count of everybody who's still here. And 5 of you come with me." Tau quickly jumped up, determined to follow the commander to go investigate the body of their attacker.
Brandon looked at her and said, "I'll stay here, to heal the wounded." She nodded at him in affirmation.
Tau followed the Elvish woman up to the top of the ridgeline, she went with two other humans an elf, and the dwarf she sat by on the ship. As they got there, it was carnage. There really wasn't much of a ridgeline, or a person left. Not really a body or a gun, just the scattered and unidentifiable remains of someone. As Tau scanned the short grass of the ridgeline, looking for a dog tag or something to identify the man, she saw a small dried up creek bed, with a smaller body inside. She ran down to it, and the other followed. The body was down face first, so she flipped it, it was a young boy. No older than 8, with a 6 round magazine locked with a death grip in his hand.
"What?" The Elvish woman said, "What kind of, monsters are the Zytrians to make children soldiers! What kind of army is it that makes children fight?! Where are their souls?!" She said, desperately trying to divert from the realities of war.
"He wasn't a soldier. He was a farmer, like his father that was shooting at us." Tau said, she looked to the Dwarf, "There aren't going to be any parties, this is their home, they believe you're here," she caught herself, "That we're here to kill them and take it."
"There wasn't supposed to be military resistance this far north..."
"Maybe not, but they" she gestured to the dead boy lying on the ground, "plan on resisting plenty." She looked at the elvish woman seriously, "You want to help your men survive? You send everybody down the ridge and onto the beach, where they can march without being seen, and every 1000 feet, you send someone to climb back up the ridge, and come back down and report back to you if they've seen the radio outpost."
The elvish woman seemed skeptical at first, but then nodded. "I agree, we take the beach further down." She shook her head, looking down at the boy. She was clearly going to speak, but she stifled it, and turned back towards the road.
When they had returned to the scene of the ambush, all who could have been healed were healed, the rest, about ten or so, lied dead on the road. "Do we bury the bodies?" One orc asked.
As the commander looked down at the corpses of the fallen she shook her head, "No. We head for the shore, I want the most agile among you to climb for the road every 8 line acres and look for the tower. Find a way down." It wasn't long before someone found a semi workable path down from the cliffside. It was about a hundred feet down, and treacherous, less of a hike and more of a climb. Hands into crevices, and feet onto ledges until eventually the soldiers who survived the ambush were down onto the shoreline. The howling winds battered them with mist from the sea.
The march was cold and wet. Much to Tau's surprise, the single fairy among their group proved to be the most useful scout, needing only to fly up and down the cliffside to check if they had finally reached their destination. But the storm of the sea was brutal, and after being slammed against the rocks by the shorewinds once too many times, her wings were broken and they were back to sending elves and the more nimble among men up the slippery face of rock. Tau stuck close to Brandon for the walk, they didn't talk much, but she was glad to be by his side. True friends were a very valuable thing to have.
Finally Brandon said, "I think, that when I get back to my son, they'll be singing songs about us. Tavern tunes, about the lost army marching through the fog to the tower with glowing lights in the sky."
She didn't smile at first, but regardless her heart was warmed by his optimism, she turned to him and said, "When this war is over, I'll visit, with my whole family. We'll come to Atheria, and Arty can meet Xaren, "
"You think they'd get along?"
She nodded without much confidence, "Yeah... I think Arty might be a little jealous of Xaren at first, you know what with him riding dragons and having magic powers and all that, but Arty's pretty mature so I think he can handle it."
"Or... we could visit you guys? I mean assuming Zytria's liberated and all that." He responded.
"Trust me, our farm is not really worth visiting. Unless you're real big on endless seas of potatoes and wasteful agricultural techniques."
"I meant, like we could visit you and Michael, wherever you'll be living when this is all over."
Tau never even considered the idea of them having a home together. The last time she saw him, her only thoughts were about if she'd ever get to see him again. Though she supposed, if she did see him again, she wouldn't let go quite as easy as she did before, and there's no better way to keep a man in your life than to lock him in a house with you. "When this is all over, we'll be living someplace sunny and magical." She closed her eyes, "that much I know."
A scout shouted down from the edge of the cliff side, "We've found it!"
This time, they threw down a length of taught elven rope, which Tau and the others began to climb. Elven rope was shockingly easy to hold onto, and it didn't scrape at her fingers like normal rope does. It surprised Tau how much of a difference magic could make in truly everything. When everyone reached the top, they were baffled by the sight, on a distant hilltop 3 long towering pieces of metal, crisscrossed by crossbars, the glow of red flashing lights burning like oxygen torches against the ever shifting fog. To Tau however, it was a normal thing to see, though the fog did make it seem somehow beyond reality.
"So, how do we attack?"
Erish, the elven commander whom Tau had finally learned the name of responded with confidence, "We hit them from here, use magic level their radio tower back into the dirt where it belongs."
Tau was startled by that proposition. She needed to escape from this army and head off into the country side, and there's no way she could do that wearing Atherian blue. She figured there had to be some other clothes for her to change into at that radio station, so she made her case why they should attack on foot. "You can't do that. I thought we were supposed to be winning over hearts and minds, at least give them the chance to surrender."
"It's just a tower, polluting the fields of nature with it's discharge." Tau never heard anyone refer to a radio in such a technical yet animosity filled manner, Mom would probably have an aneurysm if she heard that. "That's a military outpost, if they're in there, then they're combatants." The other soldiers seemed to nod in agreement
Tau shook her head, "You and I both know it's not that simple. I-"
"My advisements were to destroy the Grothundun and march to Altelo, the longer we spend debating it the more time we wait in the open and the further away our attack force gets. You told me to be strategic, I'm being strategic. I'm not sending anyone up there to die. We hit it from here."
Brandon spoke up, "Well, what if you let Tau and I go and tell them to surrender. Besides, there could be valuable enemy intelligence in there. and If you hear gunshots, you can always just blow the place sky high."
The woman pondered it for a second, "Fine. But signal in three minutes, and be cautious. I don't want to have to burn you along with this godsforsaken tower." Tau, not wanting to waste any time immediately started off towards the hillside with Brandon in tow, but before Brandon could make it past the commander she grabbed his arm, and leaned in close enough that Tau could barely eavesdrop. "Make sure your fondness for humanity doesn't get in the way of your chances of surviving this, warrior." She looked to Tau suspiciously, "and I could say the same for your fondness for the girl."
Tau put her head down as Brandon replied, "This place was my home once, I won't forget that." He pulled away from her and followed Tau. The hill was actually a bit closer than it seemed, and it was only a few minutes before they approached the unguarded sight of the radio tower. There were no fences, sandbags, or machine gun emplacements. Tau thought it might have been an ambush, but with what? There was no cover, nothing to hide behind, just a barren hilltop.
Eventually they came to a small shack connected at the base of the tower, this must be where they keep the radio equipment. It was the only building on the hilltop, so she figured if there aws a uniform to change into it would be in there. She pulled on the door of the shack. The Doorknob was cold and wet from the endless seaspray and waves of fog, but it wouldn't budge. She brought back her foot to kick it in before Brandon stopped her, "Wait!" She rested her foot back down, "Are we really just going to kick it down? I mean what if there are people in there? Shouldn't we have a plan or something."
Tau shrugged, "I do have a plan, scare the shit out of them then jump on them before they can react." She brought up her boot and slammed it against the door, the rusted lock quickly giving way as the pressure of a shorebound wind threw the door open. No one was inside, though she could hear a beeping coming from the radio. The shack was filled with walls of equipment and wiring. Long sheets of radio transcripts lay strewn about the room, and unfortunately for Tau, there didn't seem to be any loose uniforms in sight. The place had obviously been abandoned.
"Is there anything in here we can use? Any information about the enemy?" Brandon asked, "Anything that might say where would be best for you to make a run for it?"
She shook her head, the codebooks all seemed gone, except for one small spiral notebook left open before the chair of one of the radio operators. She grabbed the notebook, it was a codebook for morse. She listened more in detail to the beeping and checked it against the faint black print of the notebook, it was a single repeating message:
They're here.